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Kawagoe is also known as “The Little Edo”, because of its heritage warehouse buildings (kurazukuri) . It takes around an hour to get there from Tokyo, and it makes a pretty nice day trip. On the day I went, the small town was decorated with colourful lanterns for its “Summer Thousand Lantern Festival”.
Stuff I ate/drank on the same day. I think I have a good stomach.
FYI, the peach coolish was no good.
Album here.
Going to the Tsukiji market was an eye-opening experience and I cannot believe I did not go sooner. From what I gathered, people suggested arriving at around 7am, in order to line up for the oh-so-famous Sushi-Dai restaurant. My mom and I managed to wake up at 6am that morning and arrived before 7.
Little did I know that it would take 30 minutes to find a way out of the market area once you get in? Yeah, it was that huge! Either that or we just went too far and did not realize the eating area was located at a completely different area.
By the time we got to Sushi-Dai, there was already a really long lineup and we were told that it would be an hour wait:gulp_ee:. We decided to eat at a less famous restaurant, which was right next to Sushi-Dai.
We ordered two 12pcs sets for 3000 yen each. The price was a little bit steep, but good sushi is expensive, so are high-quality beef and pork. It’s not like I’d get to eat raw fish of the same grade anytime soon…Oh, I miss it!
There was this old cranky lady who sat beside my mom and she was totally drunk. She ordered a la carte and the sushi she picked was like 1000+ yen each, holy crap! She drank 3 bottles of beer and ended up paying 20,000 something yen.
I am glad I took my mom to Tsukiji and enjoyed the finest sushi. Now she would understand why I frown whenever we order SAMURAI take-out, hopefully:coolsmirk_ee:.
Album here.
The studio serves the purpose of demonstrating the latest cellphones from au, that are either brand new or not in the market yet. You can play with the cellphones, and there are also some computers for downloading the latest video, wallpaper onto your current phone. I think it was the chi from all these cutting edge technologies that made my old Canon camera died at the spot.
The fact that I didn’t write about it until now makes this super cold, but back in July, there was a Star Wars and KDDI crossover exhibition.
There was also a live band performing in the basement.
Now there is one more thing to do in Harajuku, aside from going to Snoopy Town and staring at funky street performers and GothLoli girls.
ToDai: Japanese Sushi and Seafood Buffet (website)
The formula for a good buffet is max(food variety) + max(food quality) + min(cost).
I went to ToDai once last year with my cousins, and it was good enough to make me go back again with my mom. It was fully booked every single day, and only for those who made reservations ahead of time were allowed to queue up in the very long line.
Since it did not take place in a splendid hotel restaurant, there was no chef slicing sashimi, roast beef, or opening raw oysters. Even so, there was one cutting mid-quality lamb leg, one making pancake, one making temaki zushi (hand roll sushi), so it was still fun. Food quality was not bad, not hotel-class either, but it cost less than $20 CAD for lunch, what more could I expect.
I was very pleased with their dessert section. There were many different kinds of cheesecake, six flavors of ice-cream, salad, pudding, chocolate moose, make-as-you-order pancake, and lots of many other delicate confectioneries.
Overall, I would recommend it because it does not hurt your wallet and the food variety is unbeatable. Last time I checked their website, Vancouver was listed under “Opening soon”. Well, not anymore. :downer_ee:
The End Punch
About 13 people were hospitalized after eating at this restaurant in the same week I went. :sick_ee:The place got shut down immediately on the weekend. Hong Kong is so troubled by imported seafood at the moment.
I have not updated this site for ages. I have photos to show and stories to tell, but I want to do them after I upgrade my laptop hard drive and reinstall my system. It is taking long than I anticipated, since the caddie I ordered two weeks ago has not arrived yet. I guess I have forgotten the rule of zero expectation for the North American postal services.
I decided I should not wait any longer, but then I found out the graphics toolkits (NetPBM and jhead) on my server have stopped functioning. I could not upload photos to my gallery! Tech support said they have disabled exec() for security issues, but if I need it they can transfer me onto another server. No wonder I have not had any success with installing Gallery G2. :grrr_ee:
Well, at least it was a prompt reply. :smirk_ee: Here is a little preview of what I was gonna blogged about:
I need to backup my website now, and hopefully it will survive in the server transfer process. Bye Bye.